Many of us living outside of Greece, including me, wonder what the treatment of Muslims are living Greece by the locals. Here’s an enlightening interview by Br. Nabeel, a Pakistani brother living in Athens, Greece.

Q. What’s your experience living as a Muslim in Greece?

Well, I am here in Greece from last 3 years.As a Muslim I felt a lot of change in myself when I came here to Greece .First thing which happened to me I was at work. The boss brought something for me to eat. I asked him, what is that? He replied “Kotopolo” meaning chicken. The first question rose in my mind, is it halal? (In Pakistan I never faced that kind of stitution like halal or haram). Any how I said to him I will not eat, cause I am Muslim. He said if you are in Pakistan you can do as a Muslim but now you are in Greece so you should do as Christians. I wasn’t good in Greek at that time. Even didn’t know at all. So I couldn’t reply. I wasn’t a good Muslim before, but I started thinking about what makes a difference between me as a Muslim and others. And really I felt a change in me as time passed.

Q. Where do people pray in Athens?

There are about 50000 Pakistanis here in Greece and about 99 % are Muslims. Here there are no proper mosques. Just Jaey Namaz or places for prayer. To whom we call as mosques. People have halls and houses on rent and declared them as mosques. These masjids are about 30 in Athens. Mostly have Pakistanis and Bengalis. But some of them are Arabs and of Egyptians.

Q. How are Muslims treated by the locals?

Here mostly Greeks think about foreigners as 3rd class citizen. If any Pakistani, Bengali or Arab has any shop, they will not go there to buy any thing. But for work they prefer foreigners rather then Greeks.

If there is a Muslim, meaning a good Muslim have beard etc. they respect him. That is why I feel good. Because in Pakistan I observed that, everyone who has beard, everyone sees him as suspicious person. But it is not here. Yes here sometime people call the person who has beard Taliban or Bin laden. But it is not with hate or something. Everyone assk why you have beard – are you a Papa? (papa is you know Imam or religious leader)

Q. What’s the status of the mosque being built in Athens?

What we Muslims need here in Greece is a proper network of availability of halal meat and one or more proper mosques, especially in Athens . Govt. had a promise to build a mosque in Central Athens (Near Mushtraqi) within 3 years. 1 year has been passed lets see what will happen next.

This post is in response to Mariam’s comment. I’m moving it here so it’s easier to respond.

Q. …None of the sheikhs speak greek….and barely english….so in other words our khutbas are in arabic, and all the greeks either sit there like lemons, or we sit next to an arab speaker and they explain wat is goin on…..

thereforeeee…rather than having these problems, could we work together to find ourselves a local greek or cypriot sheikh coz it is kind of crucial.

fi aman allah
mariam

My answer:

Mariam, wow, subhan Allah, sounds like major drama. I have to say I don’t have a solution to this problem so I’m just going to post some ideas that might help and if anyone else has ideas or feedback, please comment below.

First, as we know, the ideal shaykh would be of course someone who is qualified with knowledge of the deen. After that, knowing the language of the people plus the cultural norms of the land is of utmost importance.

Let me give you an example. I was once watching a video of people attending a mosque in Greece. At the end of the khutbah, while people were leaving, you wouldn’t believe it but they were all lined up (in the masjid!) to greet these two guys who are singing nasheed, then they touch something, make dua, wipe their faces and then leave the mosque. I was like…. whaaaaat?!! I thought it was a bad rerun of a Greek church service…no joke!

Did the prophet (saws) or the sahaba ever do that? NO! Not that I know of anyway. I showed it to an Arab and we both started laughing out of the ridiculousness of it all but the thing is my Arab friend didn’t really get why they would do such a thing. Me, being Greek, I understand that they, in essence, just copied what the Greek church does at the end of their service and “Islamified” it with nasheed and dua to replace the the “chanting” of the Bible verses in Greek plus the lining of the people to kiss the priest’s hand and recieve the bread that was “blessed”.

So back to an Arab shaykh who doesn’t speak Greek and wouldn’t really relate to the example above, how do make this situation better? Here are just a few ideas that I had. I’m not sure if they are practical to your situation, but it’s worth a mention:

1. If there is a knowledgeable Greek Muslim that can be assigned as an assistant to the shaykh, that would help because he be an advisor on the cultural norms and the Greek language. He can also either translate the shaykh’s khutbah’s for him so the shaykh can either do Arabic/Greek or Arabic/English or if this is totally not possible, perhaps the assistant can do the Greek version after the khutbah. You just have to investigate that becuase there are certain things you can and cannot do during the khutbah. This can also work for halaqahs or classes.

2. If you can’t find anyone locally, perhaps, someone could contact the University of Madinah or AlAzhar University and see if anyone there is qualified who knows the Greek language, or even English at least who might be willing to relocate to Cyprus. This might be far-fetched but at least you can try.

3. For long-term planning, your masjid can sponsor a brother to travel to one of these universities to study and return with the agreement to become the shaykh of the masjid a few years later.

Yesterday, I received a really nice package in the mail. I was surprised to find out it was four hard copy books about Islam. Well, that’s not the surprising part, but guess what? They were actually all in the Greek language! Allahu akbar.

Just when I thought there was next to nothing translated to Greek, I find out there actually IS something out there. These are the titles:

Τι είναι το Ισλάμ

Το σύστημα ζωής στο Ισλάμ

Σύντομος Εικονογραφημένος Οδηγός για την Κατανόηση του Ισλάμ

Διάλογος – Χριστιανοί, Μουσουλμάνοι

What is Islam?

The Islamic Way of Life

A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam

Dialogue – Christians, Muslims

Turns out that this website, www.islamic-message.net mails out these free books to your house. Pretty cool, eh? It’s nice to have these in your house in case your family or parents want to know more about Islam.